Friday, 3 February 2012

DFD Fifth Anniversary

It's been five years since Feb 3, 2007, the day after my 32nd birthday and the day I decided to mark my place in the burgeoning era of the Web 2.0 with my film review blog, Daily Film Dose.

DFD began with an annual 'year-end' report email I used to send to my friends. It was a compilation of the best films of the year, as well as other highlights worthy of note. The emails were popular and were forwarded beyond my reach. So I thought, “Why not do this throughout the year? And hell, why not do it every day?”

It was a bold experiment – post a film review every day – but there's no challenge I'm more stubborn to achieve than the one I imposed on myself. The very first post, Carrie, was a mere 155 words. But I quickly learned I had more than that to say in subsequent entries. From then on, it was full-length reviews.

And so, it's five years later with 1,952 posts written and still going strong. That said, I'll be the first to admit I cheat on occasion. Initially I used 'guest reviewers', who then became full-fledged recurring contributors. And sometimes I repost older reviews from the archives.

I'm not a robot, and with a family, work and other obligations, it's hard. I won't deny that. And I can even admit that I’ve missed a few days here and there for various reasons. The first instance was my move in the Fall of 2007, when I had no access to the Internet, and frankly, I was too exhausted to write or post anything. The site did go down for a couple of weeks in 2010 when I tried to rejig my URL and DNS settings. That resulted in near heart failure for me, but I eventually got it back up and back-posted for those days on which the site was down.

And now, there’s a weekend or two when I simply get lazy. But I can count all these missed days on both hands, a consistency I'm proud of.

As for my most popular post, there's no doubt it has always been The Long Take, a compendium of some of the best long, unbroken shots in cinema history. It’s received more than 200,000 unique page visits since I posted it in May 2007. Even today, almost five years later, it's consistently my most popular post.

6 comments
:

Freealonzo
said...

I came to your site via the "long takes" post and have come back everyday since. Don't always agree with you reviews but you have definitely made me check out some movies I have never heard of (and revisit ones I had).

As one of the friends who received the Year End report before the blog came to life I have to send a mighty congrats Alan. You were born for this stuff. I subscribe and regularly read the blog. I always check films I am considering against the site. Keep it up!Adamp.s. Paul Greengrass is a piece of Sh*t